Read all the latest news about Speech Right and Speech Therapy

Meet Emilia, our week two spotlight

Each week we will put a spotlight on one of the people the SpeechRight Speech and Language Therapists have been working with. This will give an insight into the types of difficulties we support and what goes on in a speech therapy session.

Background:Emilia had an initial assessment. She showed that she understood everything that was said to her but was delayed in her development of spoken words. ‘Delayed’ meant Emilia was showing the ‘typical’ path of spoken language development but it was happening at a much later age for her.

Examples:

To request a drink, Emilia will say “juice”

If she sees a noisy fire-engine on the road, Emilia will look at her mum and then point to the fire-engine.

To request a biscuit, Emilia will gesture ‘eating.’

Hearing:All assessments passed

Session:Therapy 3 with Mum, Dad, Emilia and Emma.

Emilia and her parents are taking part in Parent-Child Video Interaction Therapy. This therapy involves parents being given strategies to use within their interactions with Emilia to support her spoken language development. Parents know they have not caused Emilia’s language difficulties but there are specific strategies they can now use with her to encourage her speaking skills.

Parents both reported how they had got on with the strategies they had been practising in their ‘Special Time’ last week with Emilia. ‘Special Time’ is a specific 5-10 minutes parents identify daily when they play with Emilia and focus on their strategies. Dad said he really liked the way ‘Special Time’ gave him the justification to take time out from work/jobs and simply ‘play’ with Emilia.

We separately video-ed mum and dad playing with Emilia for 5 minutes each. Together we then watched the video back and identified all the positive things Mum and Dad were doing to support Emilia’s language (there were lots!) and looked at how each of them had used their targets.

Video is used, as research shows, this is the most effective tool in helping bring about change in peoples’ behaviours; rather than being told they have/have not done something, the video allows them to actually see it for themselves.

After watching the video, Mum felt that she had not used her strategy enough with Emilia during her interaction. In fact, the video showed her that there were lots of lovely examples where she had used the strategy and, within the video, Emilia actually used one new spoken word which she had not said before. Dad felt that he had used his strategy a lot with Emilia but he changed his mind after watching the video as he realised that there were lots of missed opportunities for the strategy’s use.

We then agreed parents’ new targets for the week ahead before we all finished with a game of ‘animal lotto.’

This lotto gave lots of opportunities for us all to practice the language development strategies together during play. I also demonstrated the key animal Makaton signs to parents so they could now sign, make the symbolic noise and label the animal. All of this will help to support Emilia’s language development; the animal noise will grab her attention so she can listen to the animal label and, if everyone else is using signs, this will encourage Emilia to use signs/gestures herself. Research, and my own experience, shows that using signs helps to support and develop children’s talking skills.

The family left happily with their strategies to practice in Special Time and the animal lotto game to play. I was left slightly disappointed to have lost yet another game of Lotto this week!

In the Spotlight next week will be Jack. Jack is 33 years old and has referred himself for support with his stammer.